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Energy and Charge Transport and Forces in Novel Environments. Understanding how energy and charge are transferred at the microscopic scales in various molecular structures and solutions is critical for developing new energy technologies, such as solar cells or batteries, and also drug designs. It is also crucial to understand the forces between particles in relevant length scales (nm to µm) and examine how the particle size and surface structure affect the spectrum of surrounding fluctuations that drive charge/energy transfer.

Research I. Energy Transport in Optical and Biological Environments. With the focus on the advances in new technologies and drug discoveries, energy transport would be investigated for various molecular structures. In particular, the molecular structures placed between novel environments such as optical cavities will be examined. The cavities are environments where light-matter interactions are important and there exist couplings between molecular modes and a cavity mode, which can lead to interesting spectroscopic features and also the modification of ground-state chemistry from small molecules to enzymes.

Research II. Charge Transfer in Heterogeneous Environments. Charge transfer mechanisms in the heterogeneous environment are relevant to the design of nanoscale structures for catalysis and important processes in materials and biological sciences. With an emphasis on chemical and photothermal catalysis, systems will be studied relevant to basic energy research. In particular, the plan is to study the technologically/biologically important systems/phenomena such as polymer-fullerene bulk-heterojunction solar cells, peptide bond formation in aqueous and liquid-vapor interfaces, on-water catalysis at oil-water interfaces, and plasmonic nanostructures. Such static heterogeneities can affect non-equilibrium dynamics, which requires developments in the analyses of the X‐ray spectroscopies as well as non-equilibrium statistical mechanics approaches and molecular simulation techniques. Machine learning approaches will be used to bridge the gaps.

Research III. Fluctuation-Induced Forces in Confined Chemical Systems. Most of biology occurs in the presence of electrolytes, where proteins, polymers, nanoparticles, and colloidal particles interact with each other showing interesting behaviors. Fluctuation-induced forces can be important in such biological systems where the large-size particles can modify the spectrum of the fluctuations in correlated electrolytes. In such regimes, the standard mean-field theories such as DLVO are not applicable and charge-charge correlations, nonlocal and non-equilbrium effects need to be considered. Considering the Lifshitz approach to treat all many-body vander Walls forces between simple geometries, the fluctuation-induced forces will be explored for various geometries in confined environments. In particular, the research examines the significance of molecular granularity and boundary conditions at interfaces in the dielectric response affecting the Casimir-type interactions. Finally, the significance of such Casimir-type interactions will be explored in the context of chemical reactivity such as mechanochemical reactions in which lubricants facilitate mechanical motion between surfaces.

Teaching Interests

My graduate and postdoctoral research has mainly focused on thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, computational material science, polymer science, theoretical chemistry, and physical chemistry. Therefore, I consider myself highly qualified to teach courses such as Thermodynamics, Physics, General Chemistry, Organic/Physical Chemistry, and Chemistry Laboratories. In addition, I would be happy to teach graduate courses that cover advanced topics in computer simulations applied to materials science, and advanced statistical mechanics. Below I would like to present my teaching experience, my own pedagogical perspective as an instructor, and some techniques I have personally found vital for an effective learning experience.

Teaching Experience and Background

I have served as a teaching assistant for graduate and undergraduate level classes in chemistry, quantum chemistry, physical chemistry, and statistical mechanics during which I have attended various teaching workshops to learn professional teaching skills. In particular, I had a chance to teach the General Chemistry Laboratory to undergraduate students in the Chemistry programs that I attended. At Arizona State University, I held the teaching assistant position in Elementary Physical Chemistry (3 credits) for about 300 undergraduate students for five semesters. Throughout my teaching experience, I have always tried to go beyond my regular duties. In addition to designing and evaluating exam questions, I held additional office hours and practice sessions to give extra attention to struggling students. Furthermore, in my final year at Arizona State University under the supervision of Prof. Matyushov I had a unique opportunity to help organize a summer school for the high school students from the Phoenix area. The summer school was supported by the NSF, Arizona State University’s Center for Biological Physics, and by the Physics department. Three weeks of activities focused on learning how to perform computer simulations of biomolecules and to analyze simulation results. Students learned basics of UNIX, could submit parallel-processor computer jobs of hydrated proteins, and to analyze trajectories by writing their own computer scripts. At the University of Oregon, I had an exceptional opportunity to co-teach a computational chemistry course for graduate students with Prof. Guenza. During this course, I helped prepare the syllabus and lecture materials, including presentation powerpoint slides, and extensive written manuals for students about how to use Linux, write bash codes, and perform molecular dynamics simulations using LAMMPS and Gromacs software programs on supercomputers. In addition, I prepared part of the assignments and examinations and graded them. During the presentations in class, I made sure graduate students got involved and asked them questions. During the practical part of the class, I was available to students, answering their questions and developing strategies to solve various scientific problems. A fun part of the class I organized was to visit and tour the campus supercomputer center. My experience at UPenn coincided with the Pandemic and I had few opportunities to mentor and teach students. Nevertheless, I mentored undergraduate students for research projects. One of the undergraduates at UPenn that joined the Nitzan lab became so passionate about the research projects that I started mentoring him even though I moved on to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and I am still mentoring him remotely. His research is going to be published soon. At PNNL, I currently help summer interns from different universities with their assigned projects.

Methods and Strategies

I think efficient learning occurs when several requirements are met which involve students, instructors, and the environments in which the knowledge is transferred. The instructor should know the materials deeply and prepare the learning materials in various styles as needed. The learning materials can be well-written documents and presentations, and possibly videos, which should be prepared before the course starts or weeks before the materials are presented so that the instructor can edit them to avoid confusion that may arise with disorganization or important typo mistakes. I think my most important responsibility, as an instructor, starts when I enter the class and start interacting with students. Effective interactions over the course of the semester can make students passionate about the learning materials, which are an essential part of the learning process. I think the instructor should note that the training styles for each student can be different. For instance, some students may learn a lot by simply attending the course sessions and listening to the lectures, but some students may be more efficient using the written documents that they can read after the class. Considering that each student may have a different background, I will constantly encourage them to be persistent if some materials are not easy for them to follow and over the course of the semester, I will ask for students’ feedback to see what I can adjust to improve the learning experience. I also think the environment in which the students learn the

materials is very important. Once in a while, when discussions are needed between students, holding the class in a more natural environment outside the classroom seems to bring creativity or interest. Entering the new era with more access to artificial intelligence (AI) tools, I think I need to adapt my teaching methods accordingly because I would usually make it clear to students that technologies like ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot are allowed (except in some exams in person) so that such technologies would fall under authorized assistance. In fact, AI technology can be very useful to enhance the learning process. I have had experience teaching students how to write molecular dynamics or Monte Carlo codes before and after the emergence of ChatGPT or similar AI technologies. In my experience, the student’s learning process is enhanced by AI technologies in the sense that they can now more easily get preliminary ideas on how to start the projects and what to do when they get stuck and to reinforce the idea that AI to be used as a plausible tool and not the final draft.